


London Rental Opportunity of the Week

by RushingHeadlong



Series: October Drabbles [8]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack Treated Seriously, Early Queen (Band), F/M, Gen, Humor, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27350521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RushingHeadlong/pseuds/RushingHeadlong
Summary: They all know that they won’t be living in the lap of luxury while Queen is just starting out… but, surely, there has to be better rental options than these.(Or: The Queen boys somehow manage to find what might just be the worst flats in London, and do their best to make it work.)
Relationships: background John Deacon/Veronica Tetzlaff
Series: October Drabbles [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982713
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	1. Roger's Terrible Flat

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled across the vice.com London Rental Opportunity of the Week articles and immediately wondered what the Queen boys would do if they had to live in some of these places… so obviously I went and wrote that. I’ve linked to each of the articles used as inspiration, so you can check these places out for yourself.
> 
> Please don’t take any of this too seriously. This loose AU is best summarized as “Queen is actually literally cursed to only rent the shittiest flats imaginable” so while I know that they would probably just live together or with other roommates we’re ignoring that here. (We’re also ignoring the exact locations of these flats because it’s just easier that way.)
> 
> As a final note, though, obviously slumlords and price gouging in rental properties _in real life_ aren’t funny. However as someone who is currently living in a less-than-ideal apartment situation at the moment, there is something very cathartic about the idea of the Queen boys (temporarily) dealing with the terrible realities of trying to find places to rent instead of just writing them in nice flats all the time. If you feel differently or if this topic pushes your buttons, you’re probably best off skipping this one!

[[Original Inspiration](https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxyqd/rental-opportunity-of-the-week-studio-flat-forest-gate)]

“Roger.”

“I know.”

_“Roger.”_

“I know, I know, alright?” 

Roger sort of wants to sink onto the sofa-bed and bury his face in his hands. The only issue with that is that he can’t actually get to the bed at the moment. He’s squashed up against the wardrobe, which means by necessity he’s half-leaning against the ladder up to the shelf that bisects the room, which acts as a makeshift mezzanine level for the flat. Freddie and John are standing in front of the sofa-bed and Brian, who’s too tall to comfortably stand underneath the mezzanine, has taken a seat in the only proper chair in the room, wearing the sort of look Roger imagines would be on his face if he was preparing to face the gallows, resigned and disbelieving in turns. 

Freddie cautiously pulls open the kitchen door (it hits the chair that Brian is sitting on) and steps inside. John peers over his shoulder, because there’s no hope of two people fitting in there, and watches as Freddie tries to open the washer door. It bangs against the mini fridge and Freddie turns to give Roger an incredulous look. “Roger.”

“If you pull the fridge away a bit, you can open it all the way?” Roger says, as if that makes any of this any better.

Brian drags a hand down his face and mutters, “Jesus fucking christ.”

“So how drunk was the landlord when he tiled this place?” John asks as he scuffs his toe along the patched floor in front of the fridge. “Or wired the electrics…”

“I’d really rather not think about it.”

“Well then.” Freddie walks out of the kitchen (he has to push John out of the way, and John trips over Brian’s legs as he backs up) and closes the door behind him. The kitchen is still visible through the inexplicable window in the door, looming over the rest of the space, a homemade hack-job of a room with unknown terrors just waiting to be released. 

Roger wonders if, maybe, the flat is already starting to get to him. Just a little.

“I’m not sure where you’re planning on _drying_ your clothes, but at least it’s only temporary, yeah?” Freddie says. There’s a desperate, pleading look in his eyes, like he needs Roger to tell him that he didn’t sign a long-term lease on a place this terrible.

“Over the rungs of the ladder, probably,” Roger says. “And yeah, I’m on a month-to-month sublease, just until I find a new place.”

“How much are you paying for it in the meantime, though?” John asks. 

Roger winces at the question he was hoping they wouldn’t ask, and pretends that his front door is suddenly very interesting. “£800.”

“800- _Roger!_ ”

“It was the only place I could find on short notice that was under a grand!”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Brian says again.

Freddie sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Alright, well, putting aside _that_ for a moment-”

“Just for a moment, though,” John says, his voice full of the promise - or threat - to _thoroughly_ discuss Roger’s rent again at the first possible opportunity.

“-there’s still one important point that we haven’t covered yet, though,” Freddie says. “Where on earth is your bathroom?”

Three pairs of eyes are suddenly on Roger, and he wonders if he could make a break for the door before one of them caught him. Probably not, he figures, he’d bang into the corner of the sofa-bed on his way and John would grab him before he even got the door open. 

“Roger,” John says slowly, in the same sort of voice he’d use if he was talking to a very small child - or just a very stupid friend who is spending an exorbitant amount of money to sublease a shithole flat in London. “The only doors in here are your front door and the kitchen door. There’s no other room off the kitchen and your bed is obviously up on the shelf above us, so _where_ is your bathroom?"

“Ah, well, you see,” Roger says as he rubs sheepishly at the back of his neck. “That’s the thing. The bed isn’t, exactly, upstairs.”

“Isn’t exactly-?”

Freddie climbs over the sofa-bed to get around Brian and John, takes Roger by the shoulders and gently moves him away from the ladder, and clambers around the wardrobe to peer up into the mezzanine. 

“There’s a fucking bathroom up here!” he calls down to the others. “Roger, what the fuck is going on with this toilet?”

“I don’t know!”

“£800, Roger! £800 for you to walk into both the sink and the bath every time you come home drunk and need to have a piss!”

“I don’t think he’s making it up that ladder if he’s drunk,” John points out. 

“Jesus fucking christ,” Brian says, for the third time. Roger thinks the flat may have truly broken him. 

“So you’re sleeping on the sofa-bed down here,” John says as Freddie climbs down the ladder, hitting the wardrobe on the way. “Next to a kitchen with a single cupboard and half a countertop and a fridge you have to move to access your washer.”

“The kitchen is in a separate room, at least-”

“Yes,” John agrees. “For some reason your kitchen, of all things, is the only part of this space that is properly walled-off from everything else. And it deserves to be highlighted, not just for that fact but because you don’t have the room for a telly in your bedroom-slash-front-room, so I imagine you’ll be spending most of your time staring through the window in your kitchen door at the sink that’s large enough to hold, from my estimate, two plates and a single cup. And then your bathroom is upstairs, and you’ll probably break your neck trying to take a piss in the middle of the night. All for the low, low price of £800 a month. Are we missing anything?”

Roger takes a moment to consider that. “No, I think that’s everything.”

“ _Roger_.”

“Believe me, I _know_!”


	2. John and Veronica's (Potential) Terrible Flat

[[Original Inspiration](https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyvk9/flat-fulham-rental-opportunity)]

“John, sweetheart, you know I love you, but we really need to have a serious conversation about what constitutes an appropriate sleeping space for our future child.”

John would really prefer not to have that conversation, actually. It’s been looming over them all day, ever since they first sat down to look at rental listings and realized that there was no way they were going to be able to afford a two-bedroom flat at the moment. Even a one-bedroom place is pushing it a little, given the exorbitant prices that London landlords seem content to charge these days, but they can’t rent another studio. They’re living in one now and some days John thinks it’s a minor miracle that the lack of extra space hasn’t driven the two of them to break up yet.

“There’s plenty of space for our future child to sleep,” John deflects. 

Ronnie sighs. She sounds more tired than she should, considering they’ve only been at this for a few hours so far. “There really isn’t.”

Really, the issue is that their coming baby is going to have to sleep in the same room as them. There’s no way around that. John can’t truthfully say that he’s thrilled by this prospect - he’s rather fond of having _alone time_ with his fiancée, after all, something that he already knows won’t be happening with their baby sleeping less than ten feet away - but he’s prepared to give this a go for a year until they can afford a two-bedroom flat instead. 

The only problem is that they can’t seem to find even a one-bedroom flat with enough space to add a crib, and after seeing far too many bedrooms that are, quite literally, a bed taking up the entire floorspace of a room, he’s starting to wonder if maybe they’ve set the bar a bit too high. 

(Not being able to have sex for an entire year would seem to imply that the bar isn’t set very high at all - but the available rental listings would beg to differ.)

John squints at the grainy photo on the rental listing. “It might not be that bad?” He didn’t mean it to come out as a question, but somehow it does.

Ronnie gives him a singularly unimpressed look and John quickly tries to distract her with something else. “I mean, look at the kitchen! It has a full range with an oven, new washer and fridge-”

“ _Half_ -fridge,” Ronnie points. “Which, once we have the baby, will be full of my breast milk, leaving very little room for our groceries.”

She does have a point there. John scrolls through the photos again, trying to see where the outlets are located. He thinks they may be able to squeeze another half-fridge into the nook where the sofa is currently located, which could work if they also put the baby’s crib in there instead of in the cupboard that the landlord seems to be implying is where their baby _should_ be sleeping. 

He’s not sure what they’d do with the sofa, in that case, since there’s no where else in the flat to move it. Maybe ask the landlord to take it out altogether? They wouldn’t have anywhere to sit if they did… but then again, he thinks it’s just facing the front door right now anyway so maybe it wouldn’t be a huge loss. 

That’s the problem with furnished flats, John thinks. You’re stuck with furniture that never quite fits the space properly. 

Although it’s not like him and Ronnie own any of their own furniture yet and god knows they won’t be able to afford to buy a bed any time soon, not with everything they need to get for the baby and the frankly _ridiculous_ fees they’re apparently going to be paying to move into a new flat-

“John.” Ronnie sets her hand over his, interrupting his rambling thoughts and stopping him from starting to scroll through the photos again. “We can’t live here.”

“We could,” John tries to insist. “The baby’s crib might fight in our bedroom in this one. You know, depending on where the door is. It could go opposite the ladder, or in front of the- the, uh, cupboard.”

The _baby_ cupboard. The cupboard that their potential-future-landlord is trying to market as a suitable sleeping space for a kid, because the listing says that the place is perfect for someone with a small child but the pictures tell a very different story.

“Actually, yeah, let’s talk about that ladder for a moment,” Ronnie says, in a voice that already tells John that no, actually, he really does not want to talk about the ladder situation. “Because in case you’ve forgotten, I am currently _very_ pregnant-”

John has not forgotten that, not for one second, but he’s starting to get the impression that he hasn’t quite taken it into consideration to the degree that he probably should have. 

“-and I am not climbing a ladder and crawling into my bed, which is on a _shelf_ , every night for the next year,” Ronnie says. 

“You won’t be pregnant for the whole of the next year, though,” John says, entirely without thinking, because he is listening to what Ronnis is saying but he’s also still trying to figure out where the doors are in this flat. 

He’s not giving 100% of his attention to the conversation at hand, is the thing. And that’s entirely on him, and Ronnie is entirely right to smack him on the back of the head the moment that those words leave his mouth. 

“John Richard Deacon, if you think that I’m getting into bed via a ladder even when I’m _not_ pregnant, then you can take this engagement ring and shove it up your-”

“How about we go out for dinner tonight, hm?” John says quickly as he closes the lid of the laptop and sets it aside. “That place down on the corner that you liked, you said you wanted to get back there, didn’t you?”

“I did. And I think that’s a great idea,” Ronnie says, though it’s clear from her tone that John will have to do a _lot_ more than that to win back her favor. 

Maybe finding a flat with no ladders or baby cupboards would be a good start.


	3. Freddie's Terrible Flat

[[Original Inspiration](https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7qba9/studio-flat-hackney-downs-rental-opportunity)] 

“You didn’t really think this place through before you signed a lease, did you?”

Freddie resents that question, not because Brian is right but simply because it’s _Brian_ who’s asking it and he’s hardly one to talk about not thinking through the finer details of a flat before signing the lease. (He loves Brian but the man is currently living in a converted attic where he can’t stand fully upright in over half of his flat, including in the shower, for christ’s sake.)

“Of course I did,” Freddie says. The fact that he may have thought about it for, optimistically, ten minutes is a little irrelevant in his opinion. 

“Uh-huh,” Brian says, clearly not buying it. He looks up at the bed - _up_ , because the bed is on stilts above the couch - and asks, “So how’s your sex life been lately, then?”

Freddie knows what he’s insinuating but, luckily for him in this argument, Brian didn’t stop to consider the phrasing of that question before asking it. “ _Fabulous_ , darling. Why just the other night I went home with a guy who I swear had a tongue that could-”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Brian cuts in quickly. His ears are starting to go a little pink but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to let this drop. “You went back to his place, though, yeah? Not like you can entertain anyone here.”

“I’m entertaining you, aren’t I?”

Brian snorts. “Not like _that_ you’re not. You offered to let me sleep on your sofa, which is about two feet too short for me, so I wouldn’t brain myself on my ceiling again,” he corrects. “Which, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the offer-”

Mostly because, as Freddie knows, the alternative was another concussion or trying to sleep in Roger’s bathtub. (Ronnie had offered Brian their floor for a night or two, but John has been looking a little frazzled from his own flat-hunting as of late and Brian had ultimately declined the offer.)

“-but you don’t exactly have a lot of space for _entertaining_ , is my point.”

Freddie resents that a little bit too. Out of all of them he thinks he’s doing quite well when it comes to his living situation. He has a sofa, separate from his bed. He has a bathroom that’s just large enough to use without banging against something every time he turns around. He even has his own private balcony! Yes, it might overlook the neighboring buildings and a carpark, and it’s not likely to get much use what with the typical London weather being what it is. And sure, he doesn’t have room for a telly and he’s needed to use the end table for some additional clothes storage and he has to fully move one of his dining chairs every time he needs to get into one of his two kitchen cupboards or use his sink…

But really, now. He’s seen where his friends live. Even if rent is a little (or a _lot_ ) tight each month, at least his bathroom isn’t on a shelf above his bed. 

It’s just his bed on a shelf, next to a window that inexplicably looks into the kitchen. That’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world, especially since he lives alone. Just because someone could _theoretically_ cook dinner and still watch him have a wank that doesn’t mean it’ll ever actually happen.

“I have more room to entertain than Roger does,” Freddie points out.

Brian sighs. That’s about the only response any of them have whenever Roger’s new (and temporary, it was only ever supposed to be _temporary_ ) living situation gets mentioned. “Yeah, well, Roger set the bar so low that I’d be pretty worried if you found something worse than that.”

Worse, no, but even if he won’t admit it Freddie still feels like he may have tripped on the bar on his way over it. He’s not fussed about bringing hookups back to his own place, but if he ever got another boyfriend it might be nice to spend the night at home with him every once in awhile and Freddie isn’t quite sure that, logistically, two grown men are going to fit up on the bunkbed even under the best of circumstances. 

“And anyway,” Brian continues. “Rog might have a shit flat, but at least it’s on the ground floor. I don’t envy you those stairs. I think they’re actually worse than the ones in my place.”

Freddie’s eye twitches a little at the mention of the stairs. Those _fucking_ stairs. Old and narrow and just the wrong height to make walking up all five flights of them a bit of a chore. He hates those stairs, even when he’s not trying to stumble up them while drunk. The fact that he then has to climb up a ladder just to get into bed only adds insult to injury (and Freddie will injure himself here one day, on either those stairs or that ladder, he can feel the certainty of that deep in his heart).

“Right, well, what can you do, darling? There’s no avoiding stairs,” Freddie says, as mildly as he can. 

“John and Ronnie are hoping to avoid ‘em in their next place,” Brian says. 

“John and Ronnie are hoping for a lot of things in their next place,” Freddie reminds him. “Very few of which they’re likely to get.”

“Still, would be nice if they didn’t have to lug a stroller and all the baby’s things up and down a few flights every time they needed to leave the house,” Brian says with a shrug. “How are you managing with groceries, anyway?”

Freddie has stopped buying groceries, partially because he can’t cook for shit but mostly because he got sick of lugging them up to his flat only to run out of space for everything the moment he got a carton of eggs and a bottle of milk into his half-fridge. 

“Managing just fine, dear, perfectly fine,” Freddie lies. “But on an entirely unrelated note, what do you think about eating out tonight, hm?”

Brian laughs. Freddie, very valiantly, does not scowl at him. “Order in, maybe?” Brian suggests. “I don’t know that I want to really go out anyway tonight.”

“That’s fair enough,” Freddie agrees as he goes to grab the takeaway menus from the kitchen. “Oh, but just one more thing… If I pay, would you mind terribly running downstairs to grab the food when it arrives?”

Brian grins, wide and amused. “‘There’s no avoiding stairs’, huh?” he teases.

This time, Freddie does scowl - and Brian’s answering laughter from the living rom tells him that it hasn’t gone unnoticed, thanks to that _fucking_ window between the two rooms.


	4. Brian's Terrible Flat

[[Original Inspiration](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxq7pn/rent-one-bed-studio-clapham-london)]

“You know, Brian, all things considered, I think you’ve done alright for yourself here!”

Funny how “all things considered” can become such a loaded phrase. Six months ago, Brian wouldn’t have thought that a bed in a kitchen and two mismatched wardrobes acting as one of his walls was anything to brag about, but after his last place he can see how this new one is a bit of a blessing. At least he can stand upright in the entirety of his flat now, and neither his bed nor his bathroom are on a shelf.

Granted he had _tried_ to sign a lease for a place like that out of sheer desperation, but Freddie had caught wind of his plans and literally ripped the document up in front of him. 

(“You’re moving out of your current place because you keep giving yourself a concussion every time you sit up in bed in the morning!” Freddie had yelled at him. “Why the hell would you move into a new place with the same problem!?”)

So, yes, it could definitely be worse. 

The problem is that it could also be significantly _better_. 

Brian shrugs. “Bathroom is a bit small.”

“Small” is even a little generous. Brian can hardly turn around in his bathroom without banging against something, and he ends up almost standing in his living room every time he needs to use the sink.

“Rog is right, though,” John says as he stirs a pot on the stove. “You really haven’t done too badly with this place.” 

It’s costing Brian just over £1,000 a month to rent this flat. Even with the little money they’re making from Queen on top of the wages from his teaching job Brian starts to break out into a cold sweat if he thinks about his finances for too long.

“Yeah, it’s…” Brian wants to say _pretty good_ , but he can’t force out the words. “...fine.”

“Fine? You can host a dinner party in here! I think that’s more than just _fine_!” Roger says. 

Brian is actually regretting the plans to have his friends over for dinner because, now that they’re all here, he doesn’t know where they’re all going to eat. Ronnie is in the living room, being kept company by Freddie while John helps with the food, and Brian supposes the two of them can eat in there - though, he’s not sure more than a single plate will fit on the coffee table at a time. And if he moves his dining table he can probably sit on his bed, and let Roger and John take the two tiny chairs...

“Well, it is a bit tight,” Freddie points out, as if he can read Brian’s thoughts. Despite being in the living room all he has to do is look to his left and he can easily join in the conversation in the kitchen and bedroom. “But at least it’s all on the ground floor.”

“And you don’t have a ladder to get into your bed,” Ronnie mutters darkly. 

John winces.

Brian thinks he sees Freddie’s eye twitch a little.

“Anyway, dinner is just about done,” John quickly announces. “Just need to cook the pasta, can someone grab that for me?”

“I’ll get it,” Roger volunteers. That lets Brian watch, with a low feeling of anxiety building in the pit of his stomach, as he moves first the table, then the two chairs, then Brian’s vacuum just to open the small pantry tucked in the corner. 

“Would be nice if you had a bit more storage room, Bri,” Roger remarks as he hands the box of pasta over to John and moves everything back to where it was. 

Brian can’t hold back a mumbled, “Yeah, you think?”

His luggage is on top of the wardrobes, and he has spare pots and extra toilet roll stacked on top of his kitchen cupboards because he has no where else to put that stuff. Even his spare blankets for winter have become part of the flat’s décor, with one draped messily over the back of his sofa and the smaller one doubling as a fuzzy tablecloth for his TV stand so he can hide his laptop bag and practice amp that have no where else to be stored.

With dinner set, Brian busies himself with plating up the food and trying not to think about how the smell is going to linger, with no way for him to escape it, not even by going to bed because his bed is _in his fucking kitchen_ -

“Even if it’s small, you do have a lovely little flat, Brian,” Ronnie tells him when he brings a plate out to her. “The landlord finished it up nicely, don’t you think?”

(“And what about my plate, darling?” Freddie asks with a pout, only for John to shout from the kitchen-slash-bedroom, “You’re not pregnant, you can get your own!”)

Brian forces a weak smile for Ronnie because he knows that she means well. “Yeah, I suppose.”

He can’t shake the thought, though, that maybe his landlord shouldn’t get too much credit just because the flat isn’t complete shit. That, maybe, just because there’s no lofted beds or bathrooms on shelves or tiles coming up off the floor that doesn’t make this place more than passably “liveable” - and that, maybe, doing the bare minimum to be decent to his tenants shouldn’t be so worthy of praise. Especially when, at the end of the day, Brian will be going to sleep in his kitchen only to wake up and bang his elbows against his shower walls when he tries to wash his hair.

Bitterness doesn’t suit Brian, especially when he’s seen where his friends live and know for a fact that he is, somehow, still doing better with his living situation than they are - but there’s no denying that it’s pretty fucking telling that _this_ can be considered better than anything. 

And as Brian tries to enjoy the rest of his evening, he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something very rotten in the heart of London Town’s rental market.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for ending this on such a glum note, but if any of the boys would struggle to muster up optimism in the face of a less-than-ideal living situation I think it would Brian...


End file.
